


essentially a comedy

by Anonymous



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 10:32:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14134260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "The happy news of your pregnancy, of course!"  said M'Baku, beaming.





	essentially a comedy

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and Erik tensed. It'd been a year since he'd woken up in Shuri's laboratory--and he deployed all five syllables even when thinking of that place, because his little cousin was one Igor away from being a full-on mad scientist--and while generally the Wakandans left him alone, he was always waiting, watching, worrying that one of them was going to start something. Okoye always looked like she was about two seconds from murdering him, even when she was asleep. 

This dude, though, had never been too high on his "wants to kill me" list. Erik recognized him as the Jabari, the one who, in the council meetings Erik had been allowed to attend, brought along an iPad and played Candy Crush, because apparently that app wasn't out for kimoyo beads yet, and council meetings were hella dull. In fact, Erik was pretty sure that the little civil war he'd sparked had allowed the Jabari tribe to ride in and save the day and therefore to demand a seat on the council without having to actually submit to Wakandan rule. So he was surprised that M'Baku was seizing him like this, and even more surprised when M'Baku boomed out, "Mazel tov!"

"What?"

"Is that not what they say to mean congratulations, among your people?" Sometimes M'Baku watched Netflix during council meetings. Sitcoms, mostly.

"We also say congratulations to mean congratulations. The 'what' was as in, what exactly are you congratulating me on?"

"The happy news of your pregnancy, of course!" said M'Baku, beaming.

Erik's next "what" was as in, what the actual _fuck_.

"Or were you planning to keep it a secret? Or--" He gasped, almost theatrically. "--did you not know?"

"Know what?" He had a strong sense he was getting played, but what the hell. Not many people wanted to talk to him, and T'Challa had a bunch of boring duties Erik couldn't be a part of without getting skewered by Okoye, so here he was, playing along.

"The heart-shaped herb." M'Baku leaned in closer. "Among its many properties is one which allows men to create, and bear, children. It is said the Princess Susu herself, fiercest of all Black Panthers, was the result of such a conception. Her fathers were so terribly proud."

There was a lot to process in that, from not feeling at all sorry he'd burned that weed to wondering how M'Baku knew. Because it went against everything he'd learned, growing up, for anybody to know. Even now he thought about what the boys back in Oakland would think, what most of his fellow soldiers in the military would think, if they could see him now: Erik Stevens, the mighty Killmonger, taking it up the ass and loving it. But the truth was that he loved it so much he didn't much care what anyone thought. Wakandans gossiped like anybody else, and he didn't mind so much, them knowing the extent of T'Challa's inexplicable love for him. It was, from that first moment after the battle, literally all that had kept him alive, and if it had evolved into something that made him come so hard he saw stars, he wasn't going to complain.

"Why do you think I'm pregnant?" he asked, a little too late. The last word came out as a croak. 

M'Baku grinned. "Is it not obvious? You are often ill in the mornings, your moods are swinging wildly, you are strangely picky about your food, and yet you are gaining weight."

"I am not gaining weight."

M'Baku beamed. "See? The mood swings."

Erik scowled. He was not moody any more than he was sick in the mornings. He was sleeping in. He was _bored_.

And besides, that sorghum was objectively nasty.

(When he'd said as much at dinner, Nakia had started to give him a lecture about corn and colonizers and malnutrition, only for it to turn into a two-sided, hours-long venting session about historic injustices, and it had been the most fun he'd had in Wakanda since being deposed. It made him feel kind of bad about the time he'd tried to kill her.

He remembered T'Challa watching from across the table, flatbread suspended a few inches from his mouth, his eyes wide and warm and wondering. And pretty soon commiserating with Nakia about all the terrible things that had been done to the continent was only the most fun Erik was having with his clothes on.)

"Princess!" said M'Baku, and Erik turned to see her a few feet behind them, watching him warily. "I was just congratulating your cousin on his pregnancy and the new addition to the royal family."

Shuri looked Erik up and down. She looked like the exact opposite of overjoyed, but she always did when he was around. Sheesh. He'd meant the mad scientist thing as a _compliment_. "This is the first I've heard of it."

"Because he's messing with me," Erik said. "I don't care how high-tech you are, that just doesn't happen here."

"Not often," said Shuri, very grudgingly, like it was being dragged out of her by war rhinos.

Something weird and overwhelming started to bubble up inside Erik and he tried to tamp down on it. He'd been in war zones most of his adult life. Blown out another man's brains without flinching, without his hands even shaking. He'd shot his own lover once. When he'd get so emotional?

Oh. 

"Yeah," he said. "First I heard of it. M'Baku was telling me about this Princess Sulu?"

"Susu," she corrected with narrowed eyes. "Sulu is a character from your American series Star Trek, which I watch whenever I want to laugh about your ideas about advanced technology."

Shit. So this Susu was actually a real person. Also, he felt like once he stopped freaking out about being pregnant, he was going to have to defend Star Trek's honor, but first--

"Excuse me," he said. "I've got some happy news about the royal family to share with the royal family."

-

"Cousin," said T'Challa, nonplussed, as he stormed through the doors to the throne room with a bang.

"Everybody out," said Erik, drawing himself up like he was still wearing a set of claws around his neck and a crown on his head. They almost all went scuttling.

Almost all. The queen mother stayed pointedly in her seat and eyed him coldly. 

"Sure you want to stick around for this, auntie?" But of course she did. If Okoye were here she'd probably have had him physically removed from the room by now. One little coup and suddenly he was persona non fucking grata.

Well, he wasn't actually fucking grata. He'd never even met grata.

"You," he said, pointing a finger at T'Challa, "you knocked me up."

Ramonda heaved a long-suffering sigh and left the room.

T'Challa sat fixed to his throne and stared at Erik for a long, uncomfortable time before saying, "I'm afraid I don't follow."

"That heart-shaped herb!" Erik exploded, and summarized it all for his cousin's benefit: the side effects, the symptoms, the history, how he could already tell Shuri didn't want her nephew or niece, and then T'Challa laughed.

"N'Jadaka," he said, chuckling, and usually when T'Challa called him that it felt like he was sliding the spear in next to his heart all over again, but this time it felt like he was going extra deep and twisting it, "they were, I believe the English word is, trolling you. That is not a property of the herb, and you are not pregnant."

He should have felt relieved and yet he was staggering backwards, falling into one of the vacated chairs. It hadn't even been real, and yet--

T'Challa was up, following him, kneeling at his feet. "It's biologically impossible," he said, laying one hand on Erik's knee. "What sort of reproductive education is there in America, for you to believe--"

"Shit," said Erik.

He'd spent years filled with nothing but his rage and his revenge, and then he'd lost that. He'd spent a year without it, and then suddenly, in the place where it used to be, there was the promise of a baby, a warm little bundle of hope, of peace, of something new to bend all his attentions towards, and then it was snatched away and he was empty again.

T'Challa was kneeling by the chair. His outfit today was sky-blue, with intricate gold embroidery at the collar and cuffs. One of his hands was stretched up to Erik's neck, the other braced against the inside of his thigh. Close to some important arteries. A quick slash and he'd bleed out. Erik had to wonder how freaked out he must look right now--probably way more freaked out than he had during the pregnancy announcement, and even thinking about that sent another spike of loss through him.

He hadn't realized how much he'd actually wanted that baby. Not the whole nine months of puking and swollen ankles and giving birth, but having a child, a Wakandan child with a Wakanadan future. A Wakandan family.

Through the picture window he could see the capital city, and beyond that the plains, the valleys, the cliffs. The sun. For some reason he'd never realized how bright Wakanda would be.

Erik blinked once, then again, and again. If he started crying now, he told himself, he was going to throw his own damn body in the ocean.

"N'Jadaka," said T'Challa again, one thumb rubbing soothingly at the worn denim, and despite the miracles of Wakandan medicine there was always going to be some part of him that fucking died when T'Challa called him that, in that voice.

"I don't," he said, staring at T'Challa's smooth blue sleeve against his old jeans. "This is--" Unfair. Devastating. A bad joke. Story of his goddamn life.

T'Challa's hand slid a little higher, towards another vulnerability, and for a second Erik thought about it. They hadn't fucked in the throne room yet, but his own hand was on his all too empty stomach, and T'Challa wasn't going to make this better with his mouth or his dick, and that realization was one more fresh horror, because he loved T'Challa's mouth and maybe he'd been so easily fooled because as far as he was concerned, T'Challa's dick was all kinds of magic.

He managed to smile, shake his head, slide his hand down to cover T'Challa's and bend over far enough that their faces weren't too far apart. T'Challa rose up a little to meet him.

Erik closed his eyes before T'Challa could get close enough to see him almost crying. "Can't believe I fell for that." Then he leaned his forehead against T'Challa's, let his shaking hands rest on his shoulders. "I'm losing my touch."

"Do you want me to speak to him?"

He huffed out a laugh. "That'd only make it worse." The idea hit him like one of Wakanda's super-fast, super-modern trains, and maybe it was going to do about as much damage, but he couldn't pretend that this want he'd discovered was just going to go away. "I'm going to pretend we never had this talk. I'm going to stuff a pillow under my shirt in a few months' time. And I'm going to ask Nakia to be on the lookout for any orphaned babies in need of a good home."

He waited for T'Challa to swat down that last, to say that he couldn't just ask Nakia to steal a baby, that any home with Erik in it was not, by definition, a good one. Instead, T'Challa stroked the side of his face. "You might want to specify only one baby. Otherwise we are liable to end up with quintuplets."

"We," Erik repeated, and breathed a little easier. He liked the sound of that.

**Author's Note:**

> Mentions of depression, mpreg, trolling about mpreg.
> 
> I really hope this doesn't need to be said, but having a kid because you're lonely/depressed/slowly emerging from a prison of your own toxic masculinity is a terrible idea, don't try it at home, etc.


End file.
